Your resume’s skills section should include a tailored mix of technical abilities and interpersonal strengths that directly match the job you’re applying for. This is one of the first places both hiring software and recruiters look to decide whether you’re worth interviewing, so getting it right matters more than most people realize. The key is being specific, relevant, and honest.
Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills
Every skills section needs both hard skills and soft skills, but understanding the difference helps you balance them correctly.
Hard skills are teachable, measurable abilities tied to specific tools, technologies, or knowledge areas. Examples include Microsoft Office, Python, SQL, social media management, welding, computer-aided design (CAD), financial modeling, foreign languages, and data analysis. These are the skills you learned through training, education, or on-the-job experience, and they can usually be tested or certified.
Soft skills are interpersonal and professional qualities that shape how you work. Communication, time management, leadership, adaptability, and cross-functional collaboration all fall into this category. They’re harder to measure but just as important to employers. LinkedIn’s 2026 Skills on the Rise report found that people skills like team management, mentorship, and public speaking are among the fastest-growing in demand across industries, largely because technology is reshaping workflows and clear human communication has become harder to replace.
A good rule of thumb: lean heavier on hard skills (around 60 to 70 percent of your list) because they’re easier for software to parse and for recruiters to verify. Fill the rest with soft skills that are genuinely relevant to the role.
How to Choose Which Skills to List
The single most important thing you can do is customize your skills section for every job you apply to. Read the job description carefully and pull out the specific skills, tools, and qualifications it mentions. If the posting asks for “project management” and “Salesforce experience,” those exact phrases should appear on your resume, assuming you actually have them.
This matters because most companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS), software that scans and filters resumes before a human ever reads them. ATS tools parse your resume into categories and look for keywords that match the job posting. If your skills section doesn’t contain the right terms, you may be filtered out regardless of how qualified you are. Use the same language the job description uses. If they say “data visualization,” don’t write “making charts.”
Start by listing every relevant skill you have, then rank them by how closely they match what the employer is asking for. Put the most relevant ones first. If you have certifications tied to a skill, include them. Listing “Adobe Photoshop” is good; listing “Adobe Photoshop, ACE Certified” is better.
Skills That Are in High Demand Right Now
Employers are increasingly prioritizing skills over degrees or job titles, which means your skills section carries more weight than it used to. Across industries, several categories of skills are growing fastest in 2026:
- AI and machine learning: Prompt engineering, large language models, and AI business strategy are rising quickly as companies move from experimenting with AI to actually deploying it.
- Leadership and people management: Cross-functional collaboration, team management, and mentorship signal that you can lead people through change, not just complete tasks.
- Communication: Executive communication, stakeholder management, and public speaking are increasingly valued as work becomes more distributed and ambiguous.
- Business growth: Go-to-market strategy, business development, and revenue growth skills are in demand as companies focus on expansion.
- Risk and compliance: Governance, risk management, and regulatory compliance skills matter more as legal and security environments evolve.
You don’t need to shoehorn trending skills onto your resume if they don’t apply to your experience. But if you genuinely have any of these, make sure they’re visible.
How to Format the Skills Section
Where you place your skills section and how you organize it can affect both readability and ATS performance. A few formats work well depending on your field and experience level.
The most common approach is a simple list placed just above your professional experience section. A three-column, three-row grid near the top of your resume lets you highlight roughly nine key skills in a compact, scannable format. This works well for most job seekers because it puts your strongest qualifications front and center without taking up too much space.
If you’re in a specialized field like technology, engineering, or law, consider a sidebar column on the first page dedicated to skills. This gives you room to list more skills and divide them into categories, such as “Technical Skills” and “Interpersonal Skills” or “Programming Languages” and “Tools.” Grouping skills by category makes it easier for recruiters to find what they’re looking for at a glance.
For software and tools, include your proficiency level when it adds useful context. “Excel (Advanced)” or “Spanish (Conversational)” tells a hiring manager more than the skill name alone. Only do this when you’re confident in your self-assessment, though. Claiming advanced proficiency in something you’d struggle with in an interview creates problems.
What Not to Include
Vague, generic skills like “hard worker” or “team player” waste space. Every applicant claims these, and they tell a recruiter nothing specific about what you can do. If you want to convey that you’re a strong collaborator, use a more precise term like “cross-functional collaboration” or “stakeholder communication,” and back it up with a bullet point in your experience section that shows it in action.
Outdated or irrelevant skills also hurt more than they help. Listing proficiency in software nobody uses anymore, or skills that have nothing to do with the role, signals that you didn’t tailor your resume. Similarly, avoid listing skills that are so basic they’re assumed. Nearly every office job expects you to use email and browse the internet; putting those on your resume looks like padding.
Back Up Your Skills With Evidence
A skills section gets your resume past the initial filter, but it’s your experience section that seals the deal. For every important skill you list, you should have at least one bullet point elsewhere on your resume that demonstrates it with a real accomplishment.
Numbers work better than adjectives here, both for ATS parsing and for human readers. Instead of writing that you “improved team performance,” write that you “increased operational efficiency by 40% across 12 departments.” Start each bullet with an action verb and include enough context for the reader to understand the scope and impact. The skills section names what you can do; the experience section proves it.
If you’re listing a skill you developed through a certification, side project, or volunteer work rather than a paid job, that’s fine. Just make sure you mention the context somewhere on your resume so it doesn’t look like an unsupported claim. Recruiters increasingly care about what you can do, not just where you learned it.